The Holy See was tired and emotional

about reports that the Archbishop of Philadelphia, Cardinal Justin Rigali, this week suspended 21 priests pending investigation into allegations of child sex abuse.

Oh that. Well…what can it say? “We didn’t tell them to.” “It wasn’t our idea.” “Don’t look at us.” “It’s the parents we blame.” “Philadelphia is a very secular place.”

No doubt it will say all of those in good time, but it doesn’t like to be rushed.

The suspension of the priests on Tuesday follows on from the findings of a Philadelphia grand jury which last month indicted three priests and one lay teacher on charges of rape, assault and other felonies related to minors, mainly in the late 1990s. The damning grand jury report also concluded that 37 priests remained in ministry “despite solid, credible accusations of sex abuse”.

Well…um…well it’s the filing system you see, along with the thing about canon law. Put the two together and it does tend to slow us down, to the point that it takes us an average of three centuries to investigate any particular act of child-rape. We’re sorry, but you do get a lot of value out of us all the same, so go away and stop bothering us, you secular bastards.

‘When will little boys stop tempting priests by indulging in the awful secularist atheist practice of having bottoms? When will feckless parents learn to sew up their child’s posterior before leaving him in the care of a priest? How could any clergyman remain pure in a society so determined to put temptation in his way?’

I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before Damian Thompson writes something along those lines in the Telegraph, if he hasn’t already.

We declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.

We the people declare that the church has no authority whatsoever to confer their priestly ordination hands on little children and that this judgement is to be definitely held by all the Church’s shepherds.

On one hand the church makes a pronouncement to keep women out of the ordination equation; while on the other hand, some of those holy men, whose ordination it accepts, go around interferring with children.

Philadelphia district attorney Seth Williams said last month that the archdiocese’s procedures had much improved in the wake of the findings of a 2005 grand jury report. Mr Williams, a practising Catholic, said: “This isn’t a witch-hunt into the Catholic Church.

“The criminal acts that occurred here are not representative of my religion. They are the bad acts of individual men.”

Of course, it’s not the church that’s buggering the kiddies, just some bad men who happen to be running it. They’re real professionals. They have an excellent track record of witch-hunts, too. All in the name of moral integrity and human transcendence and feeding sheep. Things like that. Yeah. I suppose we just have to be grateful that they aren’t allowed to burn people any more. They must have some compensation, poor things.

We declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.

The Rattenfaenger can declare all he wants – definitively even; but since the ordination of women is not a matter of “faith or morals” this is just his opinion and binding on no-one except as an item of corporate policy. Even had he said it “ex cathedra” (which he has been very careful not to do) this would still be the case. The fact remains that the founder of christianity, Saul of Tarsus, had women as pastors in some of the communities he founded and even travelled with women co-missionaries at times.

The old ratcatcher knows this full well; it’s in RCC Inc. scripture which, as we all know, is the divinely inspired word of doG. Woof, woof!

@sailor1031 ‘Religious Tolerance’ has a very interesting recent history of the debate ‘The Roman Catholicism & ‘female’ Ordination’. It’s well worth reading. It’s also laid out in easy readable layperson fashion. It deals with an Apostolic letter“In Order to Defend the Faith” [o]f the Catholic Church from errors that arise on the part of some faithful…” [d]ivinely revealed truths,” and belief in all teachings on faith and morals that have been “definitively proposed by the Church.” [S]ome “definite truths” include: [t}he ban on female priests, etc.

Thanks Marie-Therese: I’m now fairly familiar with all the bogus arguments the RCC Inc executive suite has promoted. But as this article indicates, there has never been an infallible pronouncement, under any of the three operating magisteria, therefore even if it is canon law it is open to question:

It’s a few years old but nothing has really changed and Prof. Pottmeyer’s points are still all valid. What irritates me most about all this is the intellectual dishonesty at its root. Persistently stating something as fact that by your own rules is not fact is just plain fraudulent. They get away with it because few, especially among the laity who are mostly just passive consumers of diktats from the hierarchy, will call them on it for fear of retribution.